


Krakenbit

by linndechir



Category: Kraken - China Mieville
Genre: Body Horror, M/M, Pining, Sex Pollen, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 11:24:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19700374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: “You’re dying,” Billy said softly. He suddenly knew this with a horrifying certainty in his heart. “If I go, you’ll die.”“I’ll hurt you,” Dane said again, despair leaking from his words. As if this, of all the things he’d suffered through, was what would break him.





	Krakenbit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DecoySocktopus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DecoySocktopus/gifts).



Dane had never denied that he might not survive the kraken’s gift. To Billy, that hadn’t been a price worth paying, not even with the world in the balance. But now that the world was saved, the apocalypse averted, the dangers that had haunted them all this time gone, he was even less willing to pay it. He hadn’t survived all of this – the Tattoo and Grisamentum and Goss and Subby and the end of the world – to watch Dane die now. To lose him now that they might finally have time to … to be themselves again, to live a life outside of safehouses and street fights and constant danger. 

But even with all the wonders Billy had learnt about, all the unimaginable, impossible things he could do now, there didn’t seem to be anything he could do for Dane. And Dane looked like he was dying.

He wasn’t injured. He’d still walked on his own to the closest safehouse – no reason they couldn’t re-use them now that they were actually _safe_ – and then he’d collapsed on the couch and kept getting worse with every passing minute. His eyes were wide, the irises ink-black as before, but the whites were blood-shot now. His skin had a sickly, see-through pallor like there wasn’t enough blood left in his body. And he was sweating so much his shirt was drenched, sweat dripping from his brow, his nose, making him look like he’d just bathed. Not in the coolness of the sea, but in a hot geyser.

“Dane, look at me,” Billy said for what felt like the tenth or twentieth time. Dane kept staring ahead, his eyes not unfocused, but _too_ focused. He was holding on to his own knees, knuckles white, arm muscles tense, but it wasn’t only veins that stood out under his clammy skin. Something seemed to be moving in his flesh. Like something other than Dane inhabited that powerful and right now far too fragile body.

“There must be someone who can help you,” Billy tried again. “A special kind of doctor, someone who knows what to do about this. Anyone.”

“You should leave, Billy,” Dane said. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d arrived. His voice sounded wrong – like it came from too far away, muffled not only by an ocean, but by seaweed, by algae and mud and slime. Like Dane was barely there anymore underneath what the kraken’s bite had done to him.

“I’m not leaving you alone.” Billy was surprised by how steady his voice sounded. He wasn’t pleading. Nothing in the world could convince him to leave Dane in this state. He said it again, an inalterable truth, “I am not leaving you alone.”

 _I’m not letting you die alone._ He didn’t say that, but they both thought it. Dane looked like he had already one foot in the great abyss or wherever krakenists were supposed to go after death. He looked like he wouldn’t make it through the night. And if this was it – if there was nothing Billy could do, nobody who could help, if Dane had indeed given his life to save the world and the world had only come to collect on his sacrifice a few hours later – then Billy would be by his side. There was nobody else left. No church, no family, no friends, other than Wati who’d barely made it out alive himself. There was nobody but Billy, and Billy would stand vigil for as long as it took.

Something bulged in Dane’s neck, was gone as fast as it had appeared, then slithered through his arm instead. Long, thick, mobile. Like a vine. Like a tentacle. Dane hadn’t shown any … transformations during the fight, except for his eyes; it had all been inside him. Strength and speed and reflexes, a predator’s instincts and senses. Dane and whatever coursed through his veins in perfect harmony, working as one. Like a terrifying, irresistible storm. Now it seemed as if a parasite had taken over, something foreign and alien and hateful. 

“You need to leave,” Dane said again, with more urgency than before. “I’ll hurt you.” And then more pleadingly, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t.” Billy didn’t know why he was so certain of that, when Dane seemed barely in control of his body anymore. His fingers twitched, his nostrils flared, there was something so very wrong in his eyes. But whatever Dane would do, whatever he needed to do, Billy would bear it rather than leave him to die.

He reached out to touch his forearm, found his skin wet and clammy and barely feeling like skin at all, or at least not like a human being’s. He didn’t have much time to think about it because Dane moved (fast, far too fast, like a hunter snatching its prey), grabbed Billy’s wrist and twisted it aside with more force than was necessary. He was up suddenly, pulling Billy with him, crowding him back. That solid bulk that Billy had long stopped being intimidated by, and though his mind told him that this was _Dane_ , who’d saved him again and again, who’d risked his life for Billy’s safety, who’d suffered through unimaginable pain to protect Billy, animal panic flares through his nervous system. 

Dane wouldn’t hurt him. But this wasn’t _only_ Dane, was it?

There were things Billy could have done, things he’d learnt. Some of them from Dane. Even now, he didn’t want to risk injuring him, making whatever this was worse. He still flinched when Dane shoved him into the nearest wall, and there was almost no heat in Dane’s body left when he pressed close to Billy. 

Billy had thought about this – idly back when he’d only known Dane as the new guard at the Darwin Centre, a handsome stranger to occupy his thoughts in a bored minute at work, and far more intensely during all those moments they’d shared on the run, all the times Dane had guided him and protected him – but what he’d imagined had been nothing like this. He hadn’t imagined Dane cold and ill and shaking with something that seemed to tear him up from the inside, the look on his face one of increasing desperation. In Billy’s fantasies, Dane had smiled at him. Or he’d looked serious and focused, as dedicated about making Billy feel good as about everything else in his life. This Dane looked as if he should be crying, not that Billy could tell if he was with the sweat streaming over his face.

“I’m begging you, Billy, get out of here,” Dane said, his voice cracking like a ship’s bow under a kraken’s attack. Still holding on to his wrist. Still, Billy realised, holding back.

“You’re dying,” Billy said softly. He suddenly knew this with a horrifying certainty in his heart. “If I go, you’ll die.”

“I’ll hurt you,” Dane said again, despair leaking from his words. As if this, of all the things he’d suffered through, was what would break him. 

“If you hurt me, will you live?”

Dane didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer maybe, didn’t know it himself. Billy needed no answer. If there was even the hint of a chance, the tiniest flicker of hope, a single glimmer of light in the darkness around them, he’d stay.

Though it hardly mattered what he decided, because whatever restraint Dane had had left shattered like glass and bone. Again he moved much faster than he should have been able to, grabbed Billy’s shoulder and flipped him around. Billy winced when his cheek scraped against the rough wallpaper, when Dane’s bulk pressed him against the wall. Lips brushed over the back of his neck, cold and feeling so very wrong. It was like a twisted parody of so many fantasies he’d had, but he didn’t say a word. Didn’t ask, didn’t beg, didn’t want to risk Dane finding his control again and pulling away, trying to sacrifice himself just to spare Billy whatever this was.

And what it was became clear sooner rather than later. Dane’s hands were impatient when they ripped Billy’s clothes off his body, tearing through fabric like it was paper. It would have been sexy, if Dane’s breathing hadn’t sounded laboured like he was in pain, if he hadn’t buried his face against Billy’s neck like he was trying to hide from what he was doing. Billy didn’t even know if Dane was … if Dane swung that way, and in Billy’s direction in particular. At times he’d thought he caught him looking, but he’d never been entirely sure. But this wasn’t desire. This was need. Compulsion. Billy was the one pinned to the wall, shivering when Dane touched his bared skin, but Dane was the one forced into something he couldn’t possibly want. Dane hadn’t had the choice to run away from this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered against Billy’s neck. He smelt of salt and the sea, and there was a strange texture to his hands when they stroked over Billy’s sides. “I’m so sorry. You should have left …”

But Dane still sounded like he was breaking, even as his hands pulled Billy’s jeans down, then fumbled with his own clothes, sweat-soaked as they were. Even now part of Billy wanted to comfort him, tell him that it was all right, that he could take it, even if he didn’t understand why it was this of all things Dane needed to do – but then it was far from the strangest thing he’d seen since all this had started. But his voice seemed stuck in his throat, tight with the primal fear of a small animal cornered by a predator it stood no chance against. He closed his eyes, tried to relax, hoping that it would be over soon for both of them if he didn’t try to fight.

But even a minute twitch, instinctive when he felt Dane’s cock press against the small of his back, was enough to trigger whatever hunting instincts seemed to control Dane’s mind. Billy’s arms were twisted behind his back, held tightly together, firm and inescapable and … he couldn’t feel _fingers_ on Dane’s hand. It didn’t feel like a hand at all. Part of him wanted to look, but he kept his eyes firmly shut. As if his mind wanted to protect him from whatever it was he might see. Maybe it wasn’t the world that was here to collect Dane’s sacrifice, but the sea.

Billy shuddered again when Dane’s cock brushed against him – big and thick like it had sprung right out of Billy’s most optimistic fantasies, but it felt as clammy and cold and _wrong_ as the rest of him. It had been a while since Billy had last got laid, and when he did, something about his face tended to bring out the sweet side even in the biggest, burliest blokes. He had a feeling Dane wasn’t going to be sweet. Couldn’t be, not when he seemed to be falling apart. Billy felt oddly disconnected from his own body, like he was observing himself, pinned against the wall, barely able to move, helpless to resist when Dane shoved his legs further apart and then pushed inside him. The pain made his skin prickle, burnt through his nerves, and it took him a few moments to realise that it should have hurt far more. Dane’s cock was slicker than it should have been, relentless when it pushed into him, but somehow Billy’s body desperately tried to accommodate it. It hurt, but, God, it also sent all the wrong signals to his brain and his cock. This was still Dane, Dane with his broad shoulders and his quiet little smile and those hands Billy wanted to kiss like they were in some stupid costume drama. It was still Dane, panting against his neck and mumbling desperate apologies as he thrust into him, and Billy couldn’t help but whimper.

This didn’t seem to be enough for Dane, though, or for whatever was driving Dane’s body like he was nothing but a passenger in it. After a few moments – minutes? time seemed like something out of a different life, a different world – he grabbed Billy harder, still somehow holding on to his hands, his hips, threw him to the ground with the full force of his weight, crushing down on top of him and burying himself inside Billy again like he’d been starving for him. 

His moans sounded like the crush of waves against the shore, his skin _twitched_ against Billy’s like something lived inside it. And what was wrapped around Billy’s wrists, long and thick and sticking to his skin, was most certainly _not_ a hand anymore. Fear gripped Billy again – not of pain, no. Fear that this wouldn’t save Dane’s life, but only complete whatever transformation the kraken had wanted for him. That this wouldn’t make him more human again, but less so.

But Billy’s body, indifferent to his fears and his concerns, pushed back against Dane, desperate for something it hadn’t been sure it’d ever experience, not with him. But just as it started to feel good, just as the pain dissipated next to his mindless desire, something – something changed. Inside him. Dane pushed into him again, but even as big as he was, he seemed to push in deeper than should have been humanly possible. There was a light suction against Billy’s rim that half drove him mad, and the pressure against his prostate felt far more deliberate than it should have been, like something wriggled against it even as whatever appendage this was sneaked deeper into him.

 _Whatever it was._ He almost scoffed at how dense his mind tried to be. Krakenbit. As if he had any doubt about what this was. Like he’d fallen right through the weirdness of this new world he’d discovered into some bad hentai, and an almost hysterical laugh tore itself from his throat before it turned into yet another moan – like something was ripped out of him, torn from him, like his body wasn’t his own any more than Dane’s was his. 

He was so close he felt as if the whole world was swimming, as if they’d fallen into water somewhere along the way, drowning in the endless dark of the ocean while something else sneaked around his throat, over his chin, up to his parted lips. Pushing between them at his next gasp, filling his mouth with the salty taste of the ocean, not quite making him gag, but the very idea of breathing seemed precarious. For the first time it occurred to him that _he_ might not survive this either. But he could still feel Dane’s face against his shoulder, human and unchanged. Soft lips gasping kisses against his neck, interrupted by sounds that hurt Billy more than the unfamiliar sensations tearing through his body. It was too much, too absurd, too bizarre for both his mind and his body to process. He could only hope that it would be enough. That when this was over, Dane would still be alive, and himself. That he hadn’t doomed rather than saved him when he’d stayed.

Everything went black in front of his eyes eventually, his mind drowning in sensations as he came over the carpet of the safehouse, but even that felt almost like an afterthought compared to that tentacle’s pressure far too deep inside him, pushing, prodding, bulging against his stomach. He was overstimulated, and terrified, and the last clear thought his mind managed before darkness took him was, _Please let him be all right._

* * *

When Billy rose from the depth of dreams he couldn’t remember, he felt – sore, but far less so than expected. He was lying on the couch, a blanket wrapped around his naked body. He couldn’t remember getting there, so – Dane must have put him there. Must have wiped some of the sweat and salt off his skin, too, because Billy didn’t feel half as filthy as he should have. So Dane was alive. Or he had still been alive a few hours ago. Alive and still (again?) human enough to care about such things, to realise that Billy’s body would appreciate them. Billy almost didn’t want to sit up to face the truth _(to find Dane lying on the floor, lifeless and deformed and broken)_ , but cowardice felt like a bad old habit he didn’t want to start indulging in again. He pulled himself together, hands clinging to the blanket like it could protect him from whatever he was about to see, and sat up.

There was Dane, sitting on the floor with his back against an armchair, watching Billy. He had his arms wrapped around his legs _(arms, with hands and fingers, no suction disks and tentacles ripping their way out of him)_ , and he was tense as a bowstring, but he was _alive_. And more than that, he looked far better than before. Still too pale, but not quite as sallow as when they’d arrived. He’d stopped sweating and shaking, and most importantly his skin looked like … like skin. Like there was nothing crawling underneath it, nothing clamouring to get out, no beast that demanded submission. His limbs looked normal, and uninjured, too, like he had never been anything but this. His eyes were still black as ink, but somehow Billy knew that was never changing again. And with that same unshakable certainty he knew that this was Dane, his Dane. Changed in some ways, yes, but whatever monster lived inside his skin had been appeased. 

_Monster, or god._ How could a mortal possibly tell the difference? The kraken wasn’t an old bearded man in the sky who wanted you to say the right words at church or he’d punish you, like some kind of cosmic Santa. The kraken wasn’t fathomable to a human mind. If there were rhyme and reason to what it wanted, Billy doubted either of them would ever be able to understand. Not even Dane, who had a part of its essence under his skin.

The look in Dane’s eyes was entirely human now. Guilt, and fear, and a regret that hurt Billy more than anything done to his body. Whatever had happened to Billy – and he could still feel it, could still remember it wriggling into him, pushing and pushing deeper than he thought he could have borne –, Dane’s body had been violated far more. And Billy couldn’t even imagine what it had done to his mind.

He got up, taking the blanket with him, and sat down next to Dane. After a moment’s hesitation, he settled against his side and put his head on Dane’s shoulder. Dane smelt like he could use a shower, but more than anything he smelt familiar. At first he was tense, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Billy’s closeness, but then he relaxed ever so slightly against him. His shoulders slumped, as if an unbearable weight had been taken off them. For what felt like a long time, they sat there in silence, stared at the print of some ugly modern painting the wealthy young professional this fake home belonged to had put on the opposite wall.

“Are you all right?” Billy finally asked. The question would have seemed nonsensical just a few hours ago, when Dane living through the night had been nothing but desperate hope. But now? He was breathing, and human, and himself.

Dane laughed – croaked, really, but at least it sounded like a voice again. Like something born in a man’s throat rather than in an abyss under the ocean.

“You’re asking _me_ that? After what I did to you? Oh, Billy …” Something like tenderness in his voice, an almost exasperated kind of tenderness that Billy had heard a few times before and that made his heart beat faster every time. It did so even now.

Dane didn’t move away, and after another moment he turned his head to press his face against Billy’s hair. There was so little comfort Billy had been able to offer him, considering the magnitude of his pain. Of the torture he’d suffered, of the loss he’d borne. It felt good to give him at least something. A gentle touch. A human touch. Something real, something chosen. Something that might make him feel like more than the vessel of another’s will.

“I’m so sorry,” Dane whispered. His voice sounded flat – words spoken because they needed to be said, even knowing that they were entirely inadequate for what had happened. The horror of it. Billy himself still struggled to process it, the sensations, the pain and the pleasure and the fear. He didn’t feel like he thought he should feel. He knew he should be more hurt, or angry, that he should want to cry or scream, that the last thing he should want was to be close to Dane. He felt none of those things. Dane was alive, and better, and Billy would go through a millennia of what had happened for that.

“You would have died. I wasn’t going to let that happen,” he said into Dane’s shoulder. Broad and strong. It felt exactly how Billy had imagined it. He smiled a little when he felt those muscles shift as Dane carefully put his arm around Billy’s shoulders – barely even touching him, just accommodating him where Billy was slumped against him.

“I hardly left you a choice.” The words muffled against Billy’s hair. It made him sound silly, and even now Billy couldn’t help but chuckle. It was fine. They were fine. Anything else felt inconsequential.

“It was you, Dane.” He made himself look up, even if that meant losing the solidity of Dane’s shoulder against his cheek. Made himself meet those inky eyes – they looked right on him, somehow. Part of him again. Like he’d found a balance between what he was and what he’d become. If this was what it took to help him find that balance, that was simple enough. If the god inside him needed to be let out – once, or twice, or many times – for Dane to live, Billy would gladly spread himself over an altar. “There was never a choice.”

For a moment he thought Dane might kiss him then, but instead he leant his forehead against Billy’s. Still a bit clam, still sticky with sweat, but alive and warm with it. Human. Saved. It felt more intimate than Dane’s hands on him had earlier tonight, than his lips against Billy’s skin and his cock inside him. It felt like something that was theirs alone.

Maybe now, changed as they both were but together, victorious and safe, they could find out what else there was for them, after the end of the world.


End file.
